 |
| Michael Rocco Ruglio-Misurell, Object 67, 2017 |
This weekend I managed to go to that one art project space in Neukölln that wasn't part of the 48 Stunden festival: HPFA or HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts. Not participating in festivals does make me feel special.
HPFA used to be a butcher's shop and before that it was a place for preparing döner meat. The meat history shows in the two different kind of tiles on the walls of HPFA. "What about the space's karma?" I asked Michael and Carrick. "We have a lot of sage burning," they nodded.
 |
| Carrick Bell, Pretend your thoughts are like plants (2), 2017 |
Since six years HPFA is run by artists Michael Rocco Ruglio-Misurell and Carrick Bell. They told me they were born in the eighties. I was born in 1978 but I totally identify with the eighties, especially since my new hair cut à la Cyndi Lauper, which involves hairspray to tease and trash the hair up so that it's messy and wild.
Michael likes dirty colours. His favourite color is purple since it's an artificial one. To make his sculptures he uses household shapes like for instance the sink as a mould combined with bedroom armature and construction grids. Michael is a real kid of the eighties because he likes splatter and spray. I got happy looking at his sculptures because it shows that somebody is having fun. And who's still having fun in the arts these days?
 |
| Michael Rocco Ruglio-Misurell, Object 66, 2017 |
In his video series Pretend your thoughts are like plants Carrick puts film excerpts in slow motion, layers them and peels them back away while also manipulating the sound. He did so for instance with a scene of a Michelangelo Antonioni film showing disaffected kids in the desert. In If you feel it let it happen Carrick plays around with Bruce Conner's nuclear test film from 1974 combining it with some Britney Spears shots. Again, I got happy. Isn't the aesthetisation of politics a wonderful relief in a time that everyone is so hard trying for the politicisation of aesthetics?
 |
| Carrick Bell, If you feel it let it happen, 2017 |